Citing the need to restore unity in the government, Pres. Abdoulaye Wade sacked Prime Minister Idrissa Seck on April 21, 2004, and replaced him with former interior minister Macky Sall. Seck had been increasingly portrayed in the media as a possible challenger to Wade’s leadership. In June President Wade announced that, effective in 2005, he would introduce legislation to provide public funding of political parties. On July 9 Madiambal Diagne, editor of the newspaper Le Quotidien, was arrested after having published an article about government corruption. In protest, on July 12 all of Senegal’s privately owned newspapers ceased publication, and private radio stations canceled their newscasts. They accused the government of trying to curtail freedom of the press. In July Senegal battled swarms of locusts that had invaded the country.

On May 27 the cabinet unanimously approved the principle of granting amnesty to members of the secessionist Movement of the Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC). Relevant legislation would be put before the National Assembly at its next session. The World Bank announced on September 9 that it would give Senegal a $20 million credit to assist in the reconstruction of the Casamance region and the demobilization and reintegration into society of an estimated 2,000 MFDC fighters and their families. On December 30 the government and the MFDC signed a peace deal, though several factions in the movement opposed the accord.

President Wade attended ceremonies in Toulon, France, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Provence and called on the French government to give African combat veterans pensions equal to those of their French comrades. On August 13 Wade announced the establishment of an annual Day of the Senegalese Rifles to honour the generations of African soldiers whose history had been ignored or unknown to most of the people of France.

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